India orders Jack Dorsey's Bitchat off Apple and Google app stores

Bitchat, Jack Dorsey's decentralized messaging app, is no longer available on Apple's App Store or Google Play in India after a takedown order from New Delhi, according to TechCrunch. The removal extends a months-long effort to restrict the open-source tool and arrives amid a fresh wave of protests where it had become a popular communication channel.

The takedown order

Dorsey said on Saturday that India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had directed Apple to pull Bitchat from the Indian App Store. The demand was issued under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, the country's primary legal mechanism for government-ordered online blocking, according to an Apple notice that Dorsey shared on X.

Apple told the developer that the app would remain available in every other market, but that access through TestFlight, its beta-testing service, would also be cut off in India.

When TechCrunch checked on Saturday, Bitchat had also disappeared from Google Play in India, and the project's website failed to load across several internet service providers in the country. It is not yet clear whether Google and the ISPs acted on their own directives from the federal government. Apple, Google and India's IT ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

An app built to dodge network controls

Bitchat launched in July 2025 as an open-source messaging client that relays encrypted messages between nearby devices over a Bluetooth mesh. Because it needs neither cellular connectivity, internet access nor centralized servers, it keeps functioning when conventional networks are switched off — precisely the scenario that has made it attractive to protesters.

The second strike against Bitchat

This is not India's first attempt to curb the app. In July 2026, Dorsey disclosed that Indian authorities had ordered GitHub to take down the repositories associated with Bitchat, a move that raised questions among digital rights advocates and legal experts about whether software can lawfully be restricted based on what it does rather than what it hosts.

According to TechCrunch, the government justified the GitHub order by arguing that Bitchat's architecture makes it difficult for law enforcement to intercept communications or trace users, and pointed to its ability to keep operating during internet shutdowns. That order relied on the part of India's IT law dealing with intermediaries and their liability for third-party content — a different legal basis from Section 69A, which Apple cited in its latest notice.

Rights groups call the order unconstitutional

The Internet Freedom Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group based in New Delhi, argues that the new order oversteps the law. In its view, Section 69A empowers the government to block unlawful information, not to ban a messaging app because it can operate during internet shutdowns. The group also noted that neither the blocking order nor the allegedly illegal content cited as justification has been made public, leaving the action shielded from scrutiny.

A protest backdrop

The removal lands as India sees a new wave of youth-led protests over changes to the country's voter rolls. Police detained several people during demonstrations in New Delhi on Saturday, and authorities suspended internet service around Jantar Mantar in the capital for 12 hours on Friday.

During protests in July, demonstrators reportedly turned to Bitchat and the rival app Briar after authorities cut connectivity. The surge was measurable: Sensor Tower data shows India accounted for roughly 85% of Bitchat's global downloads between July 17 and July 23, up from about 1% over the previous 30 days.

Why it matters

India is effectively testing whether blocking statutes written for content can be stretched to cover software itself — in this case, code whose defining feature is resistance to network-level control. The case also shows that even decentralized, serverless tools remain dependent on centralized distribution: app stores, code-hosting platforms and websites are chokepoints that governments can pressure without ever touching the underlying network. For developers of censorship-resistant software, and for users who rely on such tools during shutdowns, the Bitchat episode suggests that distribution, not architecture, may now be the weakest link.